carnival, and this has grown to the vision of man’s life, in which the wanton and coquette named a philosophy or a theology has replaced the gipsy in tricot.  The speaker misapplies to love and the truths obtained by love Browning’s doctrine concerning knowledge.  And yet, even so, he is forced to confess, however inconsistent his action may be with his belief, that the permanent—­which is the Divine—­can be reached through a single, central point of human love, but not through any vain attempt to manufacture an infinite by piecing together a multitude of detached points: 

     His problem posed aright
    Was—­“From a given point evolve the infinite!”
    Not—­“Spend thyself in space, endeavouring to joint
    Together, and so make infinite, point and point: 
    Fix into one Elvire a Fair-ful of Fifines!”

If he continues his experiments, they are experiments of the senses or of the intellect, which he knows can bring no profit to the heart:  “Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant.”  He will undoubtedly—­let this be frankly acknowledged—­grow in a certain kind of knowledge, and as certainly he will dwindle in the higher knowledge that comes through love.  The poem is neither enigmatical nor cynical, but in entire accord with Browning’s own deepest convictions and highest feelings.[115]

Although in his later writings Browning rendered ever more and more homage to the illuminating power of the affections, his methods unfortunately became, as has been said, more and more scientific, or—­shall we say?—­pseudo-scientific.  Art jealously selects its subjects, those which possess in a high degree spiritual or material beauty, or that more complete beauty which unites the two.  Science accepts any subject which promises to yield its appropriate truth.  Browning, probing after psychological truth, became too indifferent to the truth of beauty.  Or shall we say that his vision of beauty became enlarged, so that in laying bare by dissection the anatomy of any poor corpse, he found an artistic joy in studying the enlacements of veins and nerves?  To say this is perhaps to cheat oneself with words.  His own defence would, doubtless, have been a development of two lines which occur near the close of Red Cotton Night-Cap Country: 

    Love bids touch truth, endure truth, and embrace
    Truth, though, embracing truth, love crush itself.

And he would have pleaded that art, which he styles

     The love of loving, rage
    Of knowing, seeing, feeling the absolute truth of things
    For truth’s sake, whole and sole,